7 FEBRUARY 1920, Page 3

The film and book together make the most terrible indictment

against the Turk that can be imagined. Both have a realism that is almost intolerable. The worst atrocities have of course to be omitted in the film version, which is not, as the perhaps some- what injudicious advertisements might lead the public to believe, either morbid or unnecessarily indecent. The technical perfection of the film is extraordinary, and some of the pictures, of sheep on the mountains for instance, are beautiful ; but in the realism of the unfortunate little refugee children with their tired, drawn faces, untidy clothes, and squalid misers', and of the only too skilfully enacted brutality of the Turks, the film is almost unbearably poignant. No one who has seen it or read the book can fail to give his support to the League of Nations if he has even the remotest hope that the League would be able to prevent the recurrence of such massacres. The obscene brutalities of the Bolsheviks seem petty and local when they arc compared with the crucifixion of a nation :-

"They have buried our city in fire, they have trampled our gardens to mire, Our women await their desire, our children the clang of the chain."